RK Laxman was born and educated in Mysore but lived the better part of
his life in Mumbai as the cartoonist of The Times of India. For half a
century, his ‘Common Man’, that silent but eloquent sum of all that is
India, faithfully kept his early morning date with readers. On the rare
occasion that Laxman either forgot to include him in the ‘You Said It’
cartoon or allowed him a day’s casual leave, letters would flood the
Times office, demanding an explanation for the lapse. The cartoonist
soon had to accept, with a dry paternal pride, that ‘this fellow’ had
taken on a life of his own, and that his legion protectors had a very
decided idea on what he should wear and how he should travel — the
aeroplane was frowned on as decadent. The reader-cartoonist bond over
these tumultuous decades can be compared to the rock-steady, if
demanding, marriage that the ‘Common Man’ has with his talkative wife,
who Laxman once complained, thinks nothing of briefing the American
President on foreign policy while her husband stands by with the look of
one who had to quote PG Wodehouse, “swallowed an east wind”. Although
representative of his long career, selecting these cartoons from his
vast trove was, to put it mildly, an exercise in separating the wheat
from the wheat. RK Laxman left for his heavenly abode on 26 January,
2015, at Pune.